Is Your Work Managing You?

During the last few years, the utility industry has experienced many changes, challenges and much turmoil. First there was the Y2K problem. Most utility application implementations came to a screeching halt, in order to address Y2K and to avoid the “end of the world” as they thought they would know it on January 1, 2000. January 1 st came and went with little to no problems, but a huge amount of resources had been committed and expended, and the fact still remained the improvements or replacement of legacy applications did not occur.

Then came the start of deregulation, which has been less than a shining star. In theory, deregulation was supposed to provide an increased focus on customer service and customer retention through lower rates. However, with the brownouts and unprecedented rate increases that occurred in some areas of the country over the past summer, customer service might be approaching an all time low. At the same time, the utility industry entered into the world of e-business, but even this “fad” is having its problems, with many e-companies closing their doors on a daily basis. And because our lives in the utility world just can’t stay simple, we will add a twist of countless acquisitions and mergers, now being followed by divestitures of our foundation – the distribution utility.

Which of these events have helped the journeyman at 2:30 a.m. restore the customer back to service? Which of these events have improved the productivity of Construction, Maintenance, and Operations for our utility companies? And which one of these events has taken advantage of the technologies, looked into the daily activities for the field personnel and tried to make their life a little more efficient as well as reducing expenditures? Acquisitions and mergers were often directed at increasing revenues through an increased number of customers. But what has happened to the day-to-day support of the utilities facility operations?

In a presentation delivered at CIS 2000 by American Management Systems, quoting Public Utilities Fortnightly, "54% of companies going through mergers said that some or all of their mergers and acquisitions had not been successful.” An even more startling statement was that “two-thirds of the mergers resulted in a reduced shared price for the acquiring firm”. Continuing on, “About half of the energy mergers destroy wealth for shareholders of the acquiring company.” “Acquiring firms will continue to pursue accounting earnings, reduce the value of heir shares in most mergers, and fail to deliver the operating performance implied in the premiums they pay over market value.”

The question I present to you is: how much of the “operating performance” is based on how the operations perform? Is your Work managing you?

Understanding The Purpose of Work Management
Work management is widely accepted as the best viable method for streamlining overall corporate objectives for managing work. It is widely acknowledged that Work Management Systems (WMS) pay for themselves by reducing operating costs and improving business processes. However, with the increased number of supporting applications, there is often an increased number of process and data redundancies. The key must be how WMS should interact with other corporate systems, keeping in mind the changing business demands.

The fundamental question that is most often the most difficult to answer is, “What is really meant by Work Management?” If I were to go to 30 utilities and ask, “What is Work Management, and how is it used in your organization?”, I suspect I would receive 30 different answers.

So let’s make a basic assumption – that “Work is Work” – and that one application managing ALL work seems to make sense. Why shouldn’t the same application be able to manage a New Service as well as a Facility Extension? What makes the installation and maintenance of Street Lighting and Meters so different? To build on our assumption, here are the basic components of most work.

"Initiation – provides the mechanism for accepting and recording information describing any type of requests for work, planned or unplanned.
"Design / Estimate – determining what facility or facilities are required, and then calculating the cost to complete the effort.
"Approval – assures all approvals have been met, and that all applicable money and permits are received. The completion of this process may be the trigger to communicate with other corporate applications
"Schedule – this process should include the ability to schedule materials, crew(s), and equipment. The ability to “Group” work or stage work would be a plus.
"Work / Work Reporting – reporting the activities that have occurred and the facility work completed.
"Completion / Closing – recording what actually occurred, and sometimes, how and when.
"Compatible Units / Work Units – this is the foundation for determining the resources for any type of task